Former Burnley nurse slams 'dreadful' Blackburn hospital (From This Is Lancashire)

I agree with this... i have been appalled at the treatment of one of my relatives recently. Too many things to mention... but one example is emptying a cathater bag into a plastic tub and then placing said tub on the table that is eaten from..not offering a shower or a bath for over 2 weeks.. there are many more... I just dont think nurses are trained to be carers anymore.. they are more like junior doctors and while I acknowledge that they are busy ... a little bit of patient care and respect can go a long way. Why would you want to be a nurse if you dont like people???!

My wife has recently undergone major surgery at Royal Blackburn. She has nothing but praise for the professionalism of all staff at the hospital who cared for her from when she stepped in to when she walked out.

having just lost a relative in blackburn hospital i can honestly give an opinion of the level of service we are given.on one night shift there was only one nurse and one auxillary on duty.how are they suppose to give the care to each patience when they are spread that thin.i have lost the count of times we had to asked the nurses on duty that my relative needed some attention,only to be told we will be there soon.we asked for a doctor to attend when my relatives condition started to deterioate.three hours later he finally arrived.when we asked for stronger medication to ease the pain all i got was ,and wait for it.what did we give her last time.can you believe it?they had obviouslt not bothered to keep or check case notes or they would have known something as basic as this.
what i am about to tell you will astound you.my relative eventually needed morphine due to the pain of her condition,so of course we asked for more as the pain worstened,only to find out after half a dozen doses later they had been administering it in the wrong fashion,they had been giving it orally instead of intreveniously.
it was an absolute discrace and if any of the people who work there are reading this i have one thing to say to you.SHAME ON YOU.
so joan my heart goes out to you for your experience at our wonderful new hospital

Wait till the Tories get in half the wards will be closed.

A close relative who worked in BRI and now practising as a specialist in the US on a recent visit commented on utterly disgraceful, incompetent, shabby practices at Blackburn Royal Hospital. If in the US the hospital would be shut down. Over 70 it is common knowledge you'll be lucky to come out better than when you went in. This is common knowledge. Florence Nightingale will be turning in her grave. Shame on the NHS and govt.

Its the vast army of NHS management and penpushers(lots of them) and most of them not medically trained running wards and hospitals that are clearly understaffed with nurses who are overworked. The nursing itself is not the problem, but the army of suits in non-jobs hiding behind 'confidentiality'. With the high levels of NHS management our wards should be pristene instead of bring filthy by most anecdotal accounts. Solution: cut NHS management and employ more nurses on the wards and make senior nurses 100% accountable for the state of their wards.

My partner has just spent over a week in the critical care unit, one of the busiest units in the hospital. I have to say that the nurses, doctors and cleaners were fantastic, very hygiene conscious, and cared for my partner with the utmost care of a very high standard. They even found the time to be of huge comfort to myself and other family members during what was a very difficult time. I do feel for the staff though, sometimes it isn't their fault, it's funding. Come on Labour, sort it out.

Having had more than one bad experience of the Blackburn Royal Hospital I too think it's bad management. Hospital departments don't appear to pass on relevant patient information. Also I don't think much to them employing foreign junior doctors and admission nurses who are unable to convey questions or understand answers government don't seem to realise that a seriously ill person doesn't have the energy to deal with pidgeon English. I've instructed my children not to have me admitted to hospital - after 3 weeks in their care two hospital doctors noted "exhaustion" as the cause of my other half's death. If the nursing staff had fully entered their patient's record the story might have had a different ending.

Ess said "I do feel for the staff though, sometimes it isn't their fault, it's funding. Come on Labour, sort it out."

It's good to hear Ess has some good news about treatment at the Blackburn hospital.

However, Ess fails to say WHY he/she feel for the staff? If it's not the fault of the staff, then clearly it's the fault of the hospital managers, who have shown they are utterly incapable of providing quality health care to the population of east lancashire.

I remind Ess that it was this very Labour government that caused these problems for the 80 year old in the first place by closing services at Burnley and expecting to continue quality services in a single hospital.
Not possible mate, and with over 600,000 people in east lancashire it aint gonna work.
A government can throw as much money as it likes into the NHS but once a hospital trust ventures into the realms of private finance initatives they are in unchartered territory.

sorry Ess, but provision of quality health care in this case is nothing to do with government funding. This Labour government have no money to throw at the NHS, in fact, Labour insisted hospital trusts borrow from private finance companies to finance future developments.

I wish that ALL stories eminating from the Blackburn hospital were like Ess'. Sadly, they aren't, and Blackburn hospital were rated one of the worst hospitals to safeguard patient safety last year.

It's no wonder Ess mentions the critical care wards are 'busy'. The severe lack of staff and the inability of the trust managers to run a major hospital beggers belief!

Blackburn is in the south west corner of East Lancashire, the royal blackburn hospital expects to serve a population of over 600,000 people and STILL meet the healthcare demands of patients. Don't make me laugh!

Check out the pages at:

www.itsournhs.org.uk


for the reality of why 'TWO' fully functioning A&E served hospitals are needed in East Lancashire.

I've been a senior nurse at the trust for over 20 yrs & I disgusts me how bad staffing & morale is up there! I cannot speak for every nurse up in the trust, but personally it's horrific, they keep increasing the services but not the staff to back it up, I'm often on shifts with 1 other trained staff & HCA with upto 24 patients to care for. I personally try my best, giving medication on time & assisting with personal care, paperwork & I'll be honest if I have time I'll try to get some cleaning done. I'm often changing shifts on short notice to cover shortages, or have worked till dinner, gone home & returned for night shift. I'll agree we don't always get it right but what can we do with a service that's on it's knees!!! Corners are being cut to save £50 million, & yes the trust is run by a bunch of pen pushers that aren't & never where nurses/medically trained & but there are also nurses in higher positions that also don't like to get their hands dirty! I could quite easily rose through the ranks & be in a high position but Im not a paperwork person & prefer to roll my sleeves up & get stuck in. But I'm not getting any younger & same with a lot of staff up there we physically can't keep up with the heavy workload, & east lancs has an ageing population = heavy workload, patients needing lots of care, but unfortunately spending time with one person another suffers.
But I also disagree with patients being dragged out of their beds at all hours & moved to other wards, its a disgrace!
But please remember the brand, shiney new building has nothing to do with staff, the the hundreds & millions of pounds comes direct from the budget to pay it off at extrodenary, over inflated prices to PFI, but it's Labour goverment that had pushed for this along with it's superschools.
The problem is Blackburn cannot physically handle the numbers that are coming through their doors. It's not got the capability to deliver even a resonable standard of care to patients. Like I've said previously I can only speak for myself but I try on every shift to help everyone in my care, I constantly go home feeling I've not done enough & feel I've let both the patient & myself down. I wish I was younger so I could go abroad or I never thought I'd ever consider this but retrain as something else. People only need to see the sickness levels to understand how stressed everyone is up their. But it's so difficult to be a nurse as we get c**p from both management & general public & where general public are concerned it varies from verbal to physical.
Either way let's be realistic it all comes down to money & the distinct lack of it. But please remember majority of us nurses are trying to do our best with the cards we've been dealt!

I had cause recently to take someone to the minor injuries unit at Blackburn. Sat in the waiting room it was like being in the audience of the Jeremy Kyle show, on a chav's night out. I could see only one person with any evidence of an injury, most others were just having a laugh and a joke, in and out the door, someone also ordered a pizza!
No wonder the NHS is in this state, being clogged up with these low lifes who just seem to want a bit of a drama. They should be fined for wasting hospital time.

i had 2weeks in there they were brilliant and the food was good , what do they ecpect a 3 sstar hotel

cutthebull wrote:
I've been a senior nurse at the trust for over 20 yrs & I disgusts me how bad staffing & morale is up there! I cannot speak for every nurse up in the trust, but personally it's horrific, they keep increasing the services but not the staff to back it up, I'm often on shifts with 1 other trained staff & HCA with upto 24 patients to care for. I personally try my best, giving medication on time & assisting with personal care, paperwork & I'll be honest if I have time I'll try to get some cleaning done. I'm often changing shifts on short notice to cover shortages, or have worked till dinner, gone home & returned for night shift. I'll agree we don't always get it right but what can we do with a service that's on it's knees!!! Corners are being cut to save £50 million, & yes the trust is run by a bunch of pen pushers that aren't & never where nurses/medically trained & but there are also nurses in higher positions that also don't like to get their hands dirty! I could quite easily rose through the ranks & be in a high position but Im not a paperwork person & prefer to roll my sleeves up & get stuck in. But I'm not getting any younger & same with a lot of staff up there we physically can't keep up with the heavy workload, & east lancs has an ageing population = heavy workload, patients needing lots of care, but unfortunately spending time with one person another suffers.
But I also disagree with patients being dragged out of their beds at all hours & moved to other wards, its a disgrace!
But please remember the brand, shiney new building has nothing to do with staff, the the hundreds & millions of pounds comes direct from the budget to pay it off at extrodenary, over inflated prices to PFI, but it's Labour goverment that had pushed for this along with it's superschools.
The problem is Blackburn cannot physically handle the numbers that are coming through their doors. It's not got the capability to deliver even a resonable standard of care to patients. Like I've said previously I can only speak for myself but I try on every shift to help everyone in my care, I constantly go home feeling I've not done enough & feel I've let both the patient & myself down. I wish I was younger so I could go abroad or I never thought I'd ever consider this but retrain as something else. People only need to see the sickness levels to understand how stressed everyone is up their. But it's so difficult to be a nurse as we get c**p from both management & general public & where general public are concerned it varies from verbal to physical.
Either way let's be realistic it all comes down to money & the distinct lack of it. But please remember majority of us nurses are trying to do our best with the cards we've been dealt!

i feel for you cutth,its as shame the rest of the trust cant adopt your attitude towards their work.the vast majority of the staff i dealt with though had a couldnt care less attitude.most(not all )gave the impression of being stressed and couldnt wait for their shift to end.clearly this is not just good for moral but also for the patients receiving care.relatives should be left feeling with a sense of ease that their loved ones are being given the level of care they deserve.i clearly could see that there was not enough staff on the ward to cope with the level of patients,and this is where the problems begin.something needs to be done now before unesesary suffering or even deaths start occuring.i commend you for efforts and attitude to your work cutth,but please,please if you have any influence at all in your work place,voice your concerns and lets begin to try and change things now.lets try and make this new hospital a place where we are all proud of.

If you make an official complaint you may end up not receiving basic medical care which is what has happened to me.After complaining they will say how sorry they are if a mistake has been made,but then you are on the unofficial black list,i was told that i am not on the black list,who is on it then?I do so much wish that i had never complained as i have been passed from pillow to post ever since and left in a great deal of pain.Think about the official complaints journey very carefully.It can damage your health more than smoking.

Complaining isn't a good idea -and I say that as someone who possibly has had something to complain about recently at Blackburn Royal.

Every complaint about the hospital diverts resources into dealing with your complaint instead of treating people. Medical staff are overworked as it is -try not to make it any more difficult for them unless the complaint is about something that was life-threatening.

No problem in finding huge amounts of money and debt when it comes to a war the people don't want. When it comes to providing 1st class quality healthcare we always let government off the hook.
Perhaps we should divert bankers' (who also were let off the hook) bonuses into the NHS.

To all those in the NHS, who do their best to keep the nation healthy, hat's off! Keep up the good work. The country is with you.

ENGLISH SKINHEAD wrote:
No problem in finding huge amounts of money and debt when it comes to a war the people don't want. When it comes to providing 1st class quality healthcare we always let government off the hook.
Perhaps we should divert bankers' (who also were let off the hook) bonuses into the NHS.

To all those in the NHS, who do their best to keep the nation healthy, hat's off! Keep up the good work. The country is with you.

What war is it that you don`t want you total shitbag,

I've just had a procedure performed at the Royal. The nurses and Drs were fantastic. Kind, caring and most helpful. After the procedure, the nurse came to ask me if I wanted coffee ... even offered me a biscuit 2 to 3 times. May sound trivial - but it showed they took the time and effort in the minor details. Makes all the difference.

Blackburn Dude wrote:
I've just had a procedure performed at the Royal. The nurses and Drs were fantastic. Kind, caring and most helpful. After the procedure, the nurse came to ask me if I wanted coffee ... even offered me a biscuit 2 to 3 times. May sound trivial - but it showed they took the time and effort in the minor details. Makes all the difference.

What utter rubbish.

I have just recovered from the worst case of Diarrhoea I have ever had in my life it has lasted since Wednesday. I honestly was so ill I almost rang an ambulance, then I thought about where I would end up and decided I had more chance of surviving at home on my own.

Many nursing staff miss meal breaks and end up leaving late. The staffing levels have been cut to the bone right across the NHS, East Lancs is no different to the rest of the country. It is a sad situation, but the influx of other europeans has put such a strain on the service that it is only a matter of time before there will be no NHS. What a shame that we look after our sick and elderly this way. Nurses put up with a lot of crap and agression all the time. It used to be a job that people were proud to be in. It will be worse next year when the degree only nurses start because quite honestly for the pay the conditions suck. The only way to change things is to write to the health ministers. Labour have destroyed the health service and nobody will tell me different. Why do you think most ministers have private insurance. The wards would be clean if the staff were there to clean them. Patients would get all the care they needed if the staff was there to care for them. It is a staffing problem and it is getting worse. write to your ministers it is the only way to be heard. Hopefully Gordon Brown and his cronies will be distant memories by the end of the year.

ste.g wrote:

cutthebull wrote: I've been a senior nurse at the trust for over 20 yrs & I disgusts me how bad staffing & morale is up there! I cannot speak for every nurse up in the trust, but personally it's horrific, they keep increasing the services but not the staff to back it up, I'm often on shifts with 1 other trained staff & HCA with upto 24 patients to care for. I personally try my best, giving medication on time & assisting with personal care, paperwork & I'll be honest if I have time I'll try to get some cleaning done. I'm often changing shifts on short notice to cover shortages, or have worked till dinner, gone home & returned for night shift. I'll agree we don't always get it right but what can we do with a service that's on it's knees!!! Corners are being cut to save £50 million, & yes the trust is run by a bunch of pen pushers that aren't & never where nurses/medically trained & but there are also nurses in higher positions that also don't like to get their hands dirty! I could quite easily rose through the ranks & be in a high position but Im not a paperwork person & prefer to roll my sleeves up & get stuck in. But I'm not getting any younger & same with a lot of staff up there we physically can't keep up with the heavy workload, & east lancs has an ageing population = heavy workload, patients needing lots of care, but unfortunately spending time with one person another suffers. But I also disagree with patients being dragged out of their beds at all hours & moved to other wards, its a disgrace! But please remember the brand, shiney new building has nothing to do with staff, the the hundreds & millions of pounds comes direct from the budget to pay it off at extrodenary, over inflated prices to PFI, but it's Labour goverment that had pushed for this along with it's superschools. The problem is Blackburn cannot physically handle the numbers that are coming through their doors. It's not got the capability to deliver even a resonable standard of care to patients. Like I've said previously I can only speak for myself but I try on every shift to help everyone in my care, I constantly go home feeling I've not done enough & feel I've let both the patient & myself down. I wish I was younger so I could go abroad or I never thought I'd ever consider this but retrain as something else. People only need to see the sickness levels to understand how stressed everyone is up their. But it's so difficult to be a nurse as we get c**p from both management & general public & where general public are concerned it varies from verbal to physical. Either way let's be realistic it all comes down to money & the distinct lack of it. But please remember majority of us nurses are trying to do our best with the cards we've been dealt!

i feel for you cutth,its as shame the rest of the trust cant adopt your attitude towards their work.the vast majority of the staff i dealt with though had a couldnt care less attitude.most(not all )gave the impression of being stressed and couldnt wait for their shift to end.clearly this is not just good for moral but also for the patients receiving care.relatives should be left feeling with a sense of ease that their loved ones are being given the level of care they deserve.i clearly could see that there was not enough staff on the ward to cope with the level of patients,and this is where the problems begin.something needs to be done now before unesesary suffering or even deaths start occuring.i commend you for efforts and attitude to your work cutth,but please,please if you have any influence at all in your work place,voice your concerns and lets begin to try and change things now.lets try and make this new hospital a place where we are all proud of.

Ste.g I really really wish we could stand up, I've seen people try & seen how their working lives have become difficult, others being promoted when they should be etc. If you try & make recommendations to management it falls on deaf ears. We have a weak union that seems to PC, I remember the nurses who were marching in the streets in the 80s fight for both our rights & better patient care. I'd personally strike tomorrow & things would be different as management would have to listen. There's so much paperwork involved that in turn none of it gets completed properly or proberbly correctly. I'll be honest theirs been many a time I can't wait to finish my shift as many a time they can only be described as hell! But this wears you down & I feel it's personally destroying the caring attitude I had when I first started nursing, this upsets me as it's not my choice to be like this but the system is making me like this.
The other problem is this stress is effecting my homelife, constantly snapping at my husband & kids, not having days off as I'll be phoned up at home & asked to do an extra shift as their short but your concious kicks in & thinking of the patients & you agree to cover. Considering what we have to deal with stress wise the pay definately doesn't match, so subseqently the why bother attitude does creep in. Fire brigade or police wouldn't put up with this! But weak union also contributes as I feel there's nowhere to turn as I've spoken with our reps who say well it's happening everywhere like were to just accept it. It drives me mad! But things are only looked at when theirs an inquiry into someones death! But people die everyday as a result & it's swept under the carpet, blaming their underlying health problems, not the issues on the unit leading upto the death of that patient.
I'm sorry you've had bad experiences but if the public & press would support us & highlight these problems it would be great, but as health staff we will be sacked for speaking to the press about these problems it's written in our contracts, so where do you go? Don't say jack straw as I've spoken to him 3 times at his surgeries & he's all sympathtic but has done naff all.
The only way out the NHS has is to go private.

Cutthebull - the NHS has to go private?! Interesting conclusion. How exactly would that improve the lot of patients or staff. If you think it's so good, why don't you work in it already?

The only way out is for health workers to fight together. That means reclaiming your union. If the union is crap then do something about it, I remember the nurses marches in the 80's, massive public support.

The union's strength is only ever in its membership! The union isn't the Gen Sec., it isn't head office or someone else who'll ride in and save you. IT'S YOU!!!

We all of us, in every workplace should work for each other to protect our own interests! Cutthebull, hard times and hard choices are coming to the NHS. Let's stand up and fight for it.

pez63 wrote:

ENGLISH SKINHEAD wrote:
No problem in finding huge amounts of money and debt when it comes to a war the people don't want. When it comes to providing 1st class quality healthcare we always let government off the hook.
Perhaps we should divert bankers' (who also were let off the hook) bonuses into the NHS.

To all those in the NHS, who do their best to keep the nation healthy, hat's off! Keep up the good work. The country is with you.

What war is it that you don`t want you total shitbag,

Shame there's no online creche. We could maybe sit you in it for a couple of hours...

ENGLISH SKINHEAD wrote:
Cutthebull - the NHS has to go private?! Interesting conclusion. How exactly would that improve the lot of patients or staff. If you think it's so good, why don't you work in it already? The only way out is for health workers to fight together. That means reclaiming your union. If the union is crap then do something about it, I remember the nurses marches in the 80's, massive public support. The union's strength is only ever in its membership! The union isn't the Gen Sec., it isn't head office or someone else who'll ride in and save you. IT'S YOU!!! We all of us, in every workplace should work for each other to protect our own interests! Cutthebull, hard times and hard choices are coming to the NHS. Let's stand up and fight for it.

I would work there but I'm too specialised for them & I actually prefer to do real nursing & not just after a boob job! But if the service goes private then ppl who pay into the pot get care & not the scum of society who demand & abuse staff but hve never paid anything. Then people would get the care they deserve & there would be money to buy equipment & basic essenials that we have to constant borrow between wards. All I can say you think I or we as nurses haven't done enough then by all means why don't you roll up your sleeves & get involved! After a week in that place you'll be begging to leave. Btw I can't risk my job to go on a one woman crusade!

Firstly, NO to the NHS going private; but I think anyone with enough nous would realise that is where the Conservatives would place it once back in power! Go private, so ... we'd have people without medical insurance, unable to afford it ... what do they do, then? Sick, disabled people, the elderly? One way to dispose of one section of the population I suppose (the Nazis tried it for example with their own 'agendas' ... why not privatize the NHS, let those who can't pay simply die, swept under the carpet; that is until it happens to YOU and you don't know who the hell to turn to or what because access to such things with the word 'free advice and healthcare' ... you will have the door slammed in your faces and you will become a number, statistic, a non-person; what, you don't think so? Only been happening in America for decades and even with Obamas new measures people over there are still resistant, even doctors putting up signs saying 'no free medical treatment here'; just another fat for the goose, then, like our MPs over here)

.

As for the hospital - agreed. It's been five years now since the 'super hospital' opened. Firstly when it opened none of the phone lines worked, and no one there seemed to know which extension or how to put you through to the right one - you asked for x-ray and got a consultant in another department. Went on for months.

.

As to care. I was unlucky enough to spend my first time in hospital a while ago. The chaos from admittance at A & E right through after hours of being asked the same things over and over again, form filling by nurses each department switch (hello?? what happened to the notes that other nurse just wrote down a few minutes, WHY am I repeating myself 12 times every hour to diffferent people? Consistency, pah!) was so obvious you could throw darts at it after hours of confusion, switched to wards and finally being put onto a ward for overnight observations; the best thing that was said to me when I said I had a wallet, phone, house keys with me was 'well, you know, you shouldn't really bring those things into hospital and it's at your own risk if you do so. WHAT???! I had come into A & E by ambulance, managed to grab a few things out of common sense ie money to get home afterwards, a phone to phone a relative (yes, I know they have phones on the wards I'll get onto those in a moment, be patient!) and nothing else. Bring me back to consistency and total lack of communication between departments over patients being transferred when you'd think they'd at least have HOW you were admitted to hospital on the paperwork!

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After a while in my bed, I noticed these strange futuristic things hanging above them with a monitor, after a while I realized it was some kind of super entertainment facility whereby you could not only watch TV but also email and use the internet! My, what advancements these days. Every bed had one. Until you realized that the cost of using one was like using premium rate phone numbers. But hang on. This is the supposed cash strapped NHS, so I got to thinking - did every bed need one of these things? How much did they cost cos hundreds of beds. Later a young girl came round every other hour to ask you if you wanted to use one with a small case trundling behind her to check the machine out for any left over credit; wiped instantly, of course. I won't go on about these but I've read some cases where people have run up horrendous amounts using the phones on them without realizing the costs then had nasty letters from the NHS demanding payment.

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Now, prior to my transfer to the ward I saw this: a bunch of chavs, caps, clothing, all the typical chavmarks in a group. One was on the bed, apparently his brain was quite vacant, given his glassy eyed stare at the ceiling. Now, it could have been a scene straight from Casualty how these louts behaved and spoke to the staff. Then this happened: youngster on the bed started thrashing around, becoming aggressive, screaming, kicking, lashing out ... staff came to help, staff got threatened by chavinbed chavfriends and verbally abused. A mass of staff rushed in, probably the entire compliment by the looks of it to calm it down. More thrashing on the bed, yells, abuse and curtains closed but flying about in a whirl the movement behind them. Turns out this youngster was an alcoholic and had gone out with his chavfriends that day to get smashed - naturally the local hospital just happened to be nearby in case they needed urgent medical attention. I can say watching all that that because of it all he certainly DID get more attention than people who were actually ILL or injured on the ward as a result. So, though I already know that staff in the NHS put up with this, and any other frontline job dealing with the public these days (sadly), I witnessed that first hand and was disgusted with the people who started it.

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Now contrast this with the incident in A/E earlier. Some screaming was coming from the next cubicle, doctor shouting at the patient that unless they let themselves get treated they would be expelled by security. After a long while, the patient was removed from there out of sight through an exit. Then she came back in, it started up again. Now, as sounds travels in such places, I heard lowered voices from possibly a relative or carer of this person quietly informing the doctor he was not pleased with her approach but also the girl in question had suffered some kind of abuse at some point so therefore was traumatised to all or most physical contact. Did anyone think to check this before hand? Just simply ASK this man what was wrong? No, patient was in obvious distress, no one asked that simply question, a judgement was made and she was ejected. Now, contrast that with the louts behaviour - self inflicted - above; they were NOT removed from the ward though it was quickly clear they could easily have turned violent towards other patients let alone staff! Given as they all seemed to be smashed out of their heads either by drugs or drink!

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The night progressed. I was horrified to then overhear nurses out in the corridor or at their station up the corridor discussing patients, in a negative way. In a deragotory way I mean, no care for anyone who might hear let alone the patient(s) concerned. None of it was medical, nor about health care it was purely personal comments by the staff concerned. Felt this was outrageous, couldn't believe it was being said.

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Night went on further. A patient was moved off the ward because he had been thrashing about in his sleep; this was at the behest of a youngster next to my bed because it was 'doing his head in'. Yeah, mate, it's a HOSPITAL WARD where noise happens doesn't stop after the sun goes down! Patient was wheeled out, out of sight somewhere. Turns out he was shoved in some stock room or unused medical room to sleep all night. Youngster in bed gets out sweet packets, cupboard doors banging, bed creaking, light on the bed goes on, crisp packets going for hours. Well, there you go.

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BTW one of my friends was a nurse, she got out of the NHS when she saw all this stuff begin to creep in. When it became less about bedside manner, care - how to be a human being to another human being who is ill, humility and so on aka how to treat people properly as people not furniture - she got out.

.

But like I said, all that aside, which could be dealt with quite easily anyone who wishes it all to go private a) can afford to pay for it once the NHS has gone (but wait until you see you how fast and how far your money goes after a few medical needs are fulfilled at a basic level eg doctors visits at their surgeries).

.

No one should have to pay purely to live in this world and stay healthy. Or would those who advocate such things prefer we paid for our own oxygen per litre and go without? Because breathing oxygen keeps you alive and is a natural right or you'd die. So, then, should health care be. It should not and never be a choice between dying or paying to stop yourself dying! It also defeats the Hippocratic Oath, too: 'First do no harm'. Well any medical person would be doing harm straight off by denying people treatment because they couldn't pay for it. Whether they agreed with it or not because once that system is in place this is proabably what would begin to happen. Until it happens to you, then you finally realize that things are not always as rosey as money can buy you once it runs out and you have nothing then have no right to medical treatment as a consequence. Be happy, then?

my computer`s just run out of disc space!

Cutthebull - I have massive regard for all who work in the NHS. It's a huge organisation which performs incredibly well in very difficult circumstances. Management seem to let it down, and rely on its staffs' hard work and dedication to pull it through.

We never really know whether it is to be privatised or remain in the hands of the people. I just think we all should put need before profit.

We all have family and friends who work in the NHS. I sympathise with their concerns. As individuals they are powerless to change the NHS but collectively, through their trade unions, they can.

It's your union. It's your NHS. Fight for it together!

the sheer number of managers are due to the Labour governments NHS reforms white paper back in 2002.

To make these new NHS 'reforms' work, lots (and I mean a LOTS) of organisational management and administration was needed.

For example, the government's white paper set targets for hospital A&E departments to have patients treated within 4-hours.

Another target was to get patients seen by a hospital consultant within 18 weeks of seeing their GP (GP 18-week referral target). To add to these managerial & administration issues, the government at the same time were 'downgrading' services (such as A&E etc) in some existing hospitals and moving these to larger
'centralised' super-hospitals (such as
moving the A&E from Burnley hospital over to the Royal Blackburn hospital).

It doesn't finish there either...

Now ADD the burden of debt and the
restrictions of the private finance initiative (PFI) used for building the hospitals. The cost of PFI for building the Blackburn and Burnley hospital extensions is over £150milion. But the resulting overall cost to the taxpayer for these PFI schemes over the leasehold terms is over £1BILLION.

Only 2 months ago an independant investigation was carried out into high death rates and poor patient treatment at the mid-staffordshire hospital. The result? Up to 1,200 patients died unecessarily due to the governments NHS reforms and the hospital trying to maintain the golden grade of 'foundation trust status' (a method of partial private finance). Deaths were mainly due to trying to meet the 4-hour A&E target which had a serious knock-on effect in other hospital departments. A public enquiry was requested but Labour government health ministers refused and so NOBODY has been held responsible for the deaths.

The fact is, this government were adament on implementing their new NHS reforms saying they would work because they were backed by clinicians. The truth is totally different, there were no clinical trials, and there was no evidence they would work. Even professional bodies such as the Royal College of Surgeons advised against it. Nevertheless the Labour government surged ahead regardless. Worst of all, the government health advisors pushing the reforms through had little or no experience of working in a large 'major' super-hospital which had to cater for a heavier workload due to taking in patients from hospitals they had downgraded earlier.

Then came the recession, and to balance the books the same Labour government are insisting NHS trusts now make savings of up to 50million over the next 3 years.

It's no wonder patient care has suffered under these ill-though out, badly managed, and downright carelessly implemented NHS reforms.
Then again, no matter how many managers are employed the results will never benefit patient care, targets first for managers ya see.

Parliament is now dissolved.
Hopefully its good riddance to these Lab'servatives. then again, I can't see how the tories would go against their own principles of privatisation (PFI is a start).

The tories actually got the PFI ball rolling and closed down at least three hospitals I knew of in Colne & Burnley in 1985.

It's time for a real change, it's time frontline staff ran the NHS and not some jumped up suits parading around as 'health ministers' in whitehall. You now have the facts, it's your choice. Save the NHS while you can.